by Tom Bower
Faulkner had good reason to believe in Crozier. Unlike Graham Kelly, Crozier presented himself as a powerbroker with commercial experience, despite leaving the Telegraph Group’s advertising department amid rancour. At the FA, he was applauded by David Dein, his mentor, and by Peter Ridsdale, as a professional who would introduce the reforms ignored by the previous regime, including a ‘financial police’ office of four accountants to review clubs’ accounts every five years as a ‘health check’. Crozier was hailed as a modernizer, yet Faulkner’s optimism about the chief executive was misplaced.
During April, Crozier and Scudamore reconsidered their undertaking. The chairmen of the Premier League would not tolerate any challenge to their autocracy. Faulkner, some antagonistic members had warned, would cause trouble. ‘He’s not decent,’ complained Rick Parry. ‘He’s a grubby individual, too conflicted, wearing three hats: lobbying for the Football Trust, the Labour government and for his PR firm.’ The sight of Faulkner entertaining Labour party grandees in the royal box at Wembley had irritated those who complained, ‘Faulkner got his peerage on the back of football.’ To help disable any regulator Scudamore decided to ignore what others claimed to be his pledge to the ministers on 16 March and veto any candidate who had been connected with the Task Force. ‘There are limits,’ Scudamore told Kate Hoey on 20 June 2000. He later denied ever offering the pledge. The exception, added Scudamore, was Sir John Smith, who had not been identified with the Task Force and ‘would meet our independence test’. The Premier League, Scudamore concluded, would leave the final decision to the DCMS.
Adam Brown was outraged. Football’s veto of Faulkner, Brown warned Purnell, would be ‘over my dead body’. By rejecting legislation, Brown told Purnell, the government had allowed the football establishment to ‘play an unscrupulous game and take the upper hand’. All the hard work on the Task Force, he concluded, had been ‘wasted’. Purnell was unsympathetic. Simply appointing a regulator, he still believed, would be interpreted as a major achievement in Number 10, although the regulator’s status had changed. His task would not be to remove corruption in football but to strengthen Scudamore against the chairmen of the Premier League. Remoulded by that philosophy Purnell was insensitive to the fact that the prime minister’s selection of Jack Cunningham as the chairman of the proposed IFC would inflame the reformers.
Tony Blair’s motives for helping Jack Cunningham, an ex-minister, dubbed ‘Junket Jack’, were characteristic; and Cunningham was unsurprised by the nomination. ‘When I lost my job,’ chimed Cunningham, ‘Tony promised me something.’ Just prior to losing his cabinet post amid criticism of his competence and luxurious lifestyle, Cunningham had taken on a mortgage for a new home in Northumberland. Although he earned £90,000 per annum for his consultancies in addition to his MP’s salary of £48,371, the hedonist sought more money. Cunningham had rejected the prime minister’s first offer and soon after James Purnell telephoned to test the water with a second offer. ‘Would you be interested to chair the IFC?’ asked the special adviser. ‘Yes, if the terms are right,’ replied Cunningham. Before Blair formally telephoned Cunningham, it was agreed that the pugnacious fixer would be paid £25,000 per annum plus £25,000 expenses and he could naturally also expect free tickets and hospitality at all the matches. The appointment of Jack Cunningham was supported by the football establishment. ‘I would not have been uncomfortable with Cunningham,’ said Rick Parry who, despite his own commitment to investigating corruption, condemned regulators as ‘a bit of nonsense’ and accepted Cunningham as ‘safe, straightforward and rather good’. That opinion was endorsed by Richard Scudamore.
Jack Cunningham did not anticipate any resentment when, on 11 September 2000, he met the members of the Task Force for the first meeting in a conference room at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in Trafalgar Square. Arriving with Sean Coster as his official secretary, Cunningham addressed the small group as subordinates. ‘I’ll be based at the FA’s new headquarters in Soho Square,’ he pronounced, ‘under the terms of reference agreed to by the FA. I’ll be paid by the FA.’ Cunningham was insensitive to the frisson of irritation among his audience, unaware that his opening statement undermined their long campaign for an independent regulator. Blithely, he continued to expound that since the FA’s total budget was £150,000, there would be no salaries or expenses for the other members. Only he would be paid. ‘I’ll handle all the press enquiries,’ concluded Cunningham. ‘Everything will be done through me.’ The politician demanded the spotlight.
His audience became hostile. Each sensed that Cunningham identified them as ‘mere rubber stamps for decisions taken by Cunningham, Scudamore and Coster’. Adam Brown raised the first doubts: ‘What about your relationship with Newcastle?’ ‘I haven’t got one,’ snapped Cunningham, an odd denial since his entry in the House of Commons register of interests listed ‘gifts, benefits and hospitality’ from Newcastle United. Football fans in the north-east bore a serious grievance. Cunningham had recently supported a scheme by Newcastle’s directors to deprive 4,000 supporters of their old seats, despite their purchase of bonds to rebuild the ground. Some investors had lost money. The fans’ anger had been inflamed by a secretly recorded denunciation of Newcastle’s supporters by two directors of the club in a Spanish brothel. Cunningham was unconcerned by the appearance of his partisanship.
‘I’ve got some concerns about your objectivity,’ said Sir John Smith, the former police chief who had expected the post, ‘if you’re located and paid by the FA.’ ‘I’ll be independent,’ Cunningham replied curtly. So far as Cunningham was concerned, his appointment was final. Oblivious to the resentment, he departed. ‘We’ve got to get rid of Cunningham,’ suggested Faulkner later that day. ‘He’s so arrogant,’ agreed Sir John Smith, voicing the unanimous conclusion. Their plot was to embarrass the government. Lord Faulkner, the lobbyist and ringleader, was still grieving that Tom Pendry had been anointed the chairman of the Football Foundation at a ceremony in Downing Street on 25 July attended by Tony Blair and Kevin Keegan. This latest twist reinforced his conviction that the Premier League was ‘blackmailing’ the government and making a ‘mockery of two-and-a-half-years’ work’ having ‘sold out thousands of football fans’. Kate Hoey, the minister of sport, was a natural ally.
Efficiently, Faulkner organized coverage in the Sunday newspapers of the row with Cunningham. Kate Hoey, Faulkner told his contacts, was ‘resisting but needs a lot of help. Chris Smith must be persuaded not to sell out to the Premier League . . . It is vital that John Smith declines to serve and that becomes publicly known asap.’ He was pleased with the results: ‘Denis [Campbell] and Patrick [Barclay] have done us proud today,’ he reported to Kate Hoey.
The letter Faulkner drafted for supporter groups to send to Blair was defiant. The government, he wrote, was participating in ‘seedy horse trading with the football establishment . . . It seems that the secretary of state is so concerned about not offending the Premier League that he is prepared to entirely exclude the wishes of football supporters and capitulate to the Premier League’s demands.’ Faulkner accused Tony Blair and Chris Smith of ‘siding with the establishment whom the Task Force was set up to reform’. The proposed IFC, he protested to the prime minister, is a ‘weak and biased establishment lapdog’.
Purnell and Burnham were furious. The revolt against Cunningham meant that they had failed to deliver Downing Street’s agreement with Scudamore and Crozier. Principle had interfered with philistinism. The embarrassing publicity was added to by Faulkner’s ‘unhelpful’ questions in the House of Lords about Cunningham. The special advisers suspected Kate Hoey had briefed her Labour colleague. News had filtered out that Hoey had targeted Faulkner and Scudamore while they were eating in the Barry Room in the House of Lords and that she had picked an argument with Scudamore. The following day, Faulkner sought to broker a compromise.
Over lunch with Adam Crozier on 10 August 2000, Faulkner proposed that if Sir John Smith rather than Cunningham w
ere chairman the Task Force could work with the FA’s version of self-regulation. But, warned Faulkner, if the FA and the government persisted with Cunningham, the Task Force would publicly denounce the plan. Crozier was suspicious while Richard Scudamore was scathing. Faulkner, he seethed, had proved himself totally unreliable and was ‘not considered to be one of us’. Faulkner’s compromise was rejected.
Sir John Smith, a fundamentally decent public servant, was agitated. Richard Faulkner, he decided, was right. The government should impose statutory regulation on football. In a letter on 19 September 2000 to Sean Coster at the DCMS, Sir John Smith declared his refusal to participate in the IFC on the FA’s terms or with Cunningham as chairman: ‘We are gravely concerned at the way that [football’s] reputation for integrity and fair play has diminished over time . . . The football authorities have been found seriously wanting . . . We all have had our confidence so shaken by the tenor of the initial meeting.’ To forestall a crisis, Chris Smith agreed to meet John Smith and four others on 3 October 2000.
While the politician and his advisers groped uncertainly to escape their predicament, the resistance of the Premier League clubs to any outside regulation had stiffened. ‘John Smith irritates me beyond belief,’ said Parry, echoing a common complaint. ‘His report was superficial, the product of David Davies saying, “We must be seen to act.” And Smith didn’t even bother to come to see me although I’d spent years on the bungs inquiry. He said he couldn’t get a train to Liverpool because of bad weather.’ A new battle line was drawn.
Chris Smith hated confrontation, but his orders from Downing Street, relayed through Burnham, were unequivocal: ‘Cunningham is immovable. He’s furious. He refuses to resign. And he demands that his chairmanship be announced.’ Obediently, Chris Smith repeated to his visitors that Cunningham had been chosen as ‘a result of a “cross-departmental” decision. The choice cannot be questioned and it is therefore irrevocable.’ Sir John Smith’s written reply was equally unyielding: ‘That being the case, we feel unable to play any further part. We do this with deep regret.’
The minister asked Burnham for guidance. Burnham in turn consulted Purnell. Both agreed that Cunningham had lost the media battle and ‘should be dumped’. Their method was painless. Philippa Drew, the civil servant, was ordered to announce on 26 October 2000 that the appointment of a regulator required adherence to the Nolan principles of formally advertising and interviewing the candidates. Cunningham’s appointment was smartly airbrushed from history. The two special advisers sought revenge. ‘This isn’t a crisis,’ Purnell and Burnham agreed, ‘but it’s a pain and we’re not going to reward John Smith for his putsch.’ Sir John Smith’s comment – ‘the Premier League needs to be less selfish and consider the wider interest of football’ – categorized him as the enemy. The advisers’ message to Crozier and Scudamore was reassuring for the football cabal: ‘Sir John Smith is unreliable, difficult and has effectively blackmailed us.’ Neither cared to consider that the former deputy commissioner of Scotland Yard was an incorruptible public servant and was standing his ground in a tough environment. He was disqualified out of fear that he might become effective. Sir John Smith was not told about the veto; instead, he was encouraged to apply to become the IFC’s chairman. In a telephone call by Scudamore to Sir John, who was visiting Kansas City in America, the football executive allayed the former police chief’s suspicions. ‘Are you thinking of applying?’ asked Scudamore. ‘Yes,’ replied Smith. ‘Good,’ soothed Scudamore.
Kate Hoey had been similarly labelled as dangerous. Her public spats with Ken Bates and Richard Scudamore matched her antagonism towards Adam Crozier. She damned the FA executive as a glib, superficial Walter Mitty character. The Labour MP had little sympathy for a marketeer of football whose salary had just been increased by an additional £100,000 to £375,000. She believed he appeared more interested in power than the sport. Other than cup finals and international games, he was infrequently seen at unglamorous League matches across the country. Isolated from the grass roots, she alleged, he was too limited intellectually to understand the inevitability of football’s crisis.
Adam Crozier similarly bore no respect for the politician. In particular, he was appalled by her support for the reintroduction of safe terraces in stadiums to allow the young and poor access to football. The Premier League clubs feared loss of income if the seats were removed and, in self-defence, invoked the police’s criticism, which blamed terraces for all of football’s troubles. Crozier did not want the debate to start and Purnell and Burnham were ready to oblige. On the eve of Kate Hoey releasing a report advocating the reintroduction of safe terraces, Burnham sent the Press Association a statement in Chris Smith’s name criticizing the proposals for ‘adding nothing new’. After discovering that Burnham had checked ‘Smith’s statement’ with the Premier League before its release to the Press Association, Kate Hoey yelled, ‘That’s sabotage.’ She never spoke to Burnham again. Their dispute delighted the football cabal; Kate Hoey’s alienation from Downing Street was emboldening.
Finding a safe regulator was not as easy as Philippa Drew and Richard Scudamore had anticipated. Drew admitted failure after repeatedly ‘trawling through the DCMS data base’. To help Drew Scudamore paid Spencer Stuart, the headhunters, £20,000 to produce ten names. Their recommendations included Howard Davies, the City regulator, Sandy Leitch, the chief executive of Zurich Financial Services, Terry Burns, the former permanent secretary at the Treasury, Peter Levene, the chairman of Deutsche Bank, Peter Sutherland, the chairman of British Petroleum, and Keith Oates, chairman of Byzantium International. Rejecting their work with deft understatement as ‘unhelpful’, Drew consulted Chris Smith. He suggested Michael Parkinson, the TV presenter. Drew approached Parkinson and sent an application form. The notion of Michael Parkinson as football’s policeman reflected the confusion within the department; they had not anticipated Parkinson’s commitment to football journalism.
Bereft of further ideas, Philippa Drew raised the possibility of reconsidering Sir John Smith. That idea, Richard Scudamore declared, was intolerable. ‘The football authorities,’ Scudamore told her, ‘would abandon the IFC proposal if Sir John were to be chosen as first chairman.’ In Scudamore’s opinion, Sir John Smith’s support for the ‘majority’ Task Force report and his role in Jack Cunningham’s demise disqualified his application because of a ‘conflict of interest’. The politicians were startled by Scudamore’s apparent misunderstanding of the term, ‘conflict of interest’: the real ‘conflicts’ were the reasons for appointing a regulator. Government reaction was contradictory. Chris Smith pondered how his department would bow to Scudamore’s veto, while Kate Hoey asked Geoff Thompson, the FA’s chairman, for his reaction to Scudamore’s ‘amazing statement’ to ‘oppose John Smith and the entire proposal’.
There was no reply from Thompson. The neat solution, the football executives decided, was to follow the procedures and formally interview Sir John Smith for the post. ‘Are we wasting our time being here?’ asked Smith during the interview. He looked directly at Scudamore who had remained silent throughout. ‘Oh no,’ replied Drew. ‘We are all independent.’ That evening, Scudamore telephoned Smith at home. ‘Please realize that there’s nothing personal in this,’ said Scudamore in a voice which the former deputy commissioner recognized from his career chasing criminals. Unpleasant, thought Sir John; he felt unusually debased. Scudamore was defiant. Defeating Sir John Smith, Lord Faulkner and their accomplices, it appeared, removed an unsightly wart from the Premier League’s bid to present a smooth image.
Six years earlier, Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell had raged about Andy Cole’s transfer for £7 million. The latest transfer fees made Andy Cole’s price tag look like a pittance, and football’s warlords were inflicting further embarrassments on the government.
The estimated cost of Wembley’s reconstruction had risen again; on this occasion from £475 million in early 2000 to £660 million. The cost of the actual stadium was, accor
ding to Ken Bates, fixed at £316 million, the extra millions were for the site and to develop the surrounding infrastructure. Bates, as the representative of the FA, had immersed the project in controversy.
At the beginning of the year, two English contractors had complained about the ‘adversarial’ tendering process, mentioning the ‘change of culture’ by Wembley National Stadium Ltd (WNSL) under Bates’s chairmanship. There was no reaction from Chris Smith’s office. Preoccupied by the bid for the 2006 World Cup, Smith and his officials had also overlooked another concern: the company had named Multiplex of Australia as the preferred contractor, the same company responsible for completing the stadium at Chelsea. No one in Whitehall queried the failure of the WNSL directors to offer the contract to public tender despite the use of public money. A subsequent investigation would report a ‘perception . . . that the process had not been entirely fair’. Consistent with the familiar customs of the football business, others mentioned ‘possible conflicts of interest’ and a ‘risk . . . in the highest possible standards of transparency’.
Ken Bates was untroubled by those perceptions, scorning a consultant’s review that the directors of the project ‘may have been misled’ about important negotiations with the contractors. Bates’s brazenness undermined his credibility. Some senior board members of the FA believed that Ken Bates’s experience as a property developer was proving inadequate to manage the Wembley project. Although the business plan, prepared by Investec and Chase Manhattan, two merchant banks, endorsed Bates’s confidence about his ‘first-class design with a first-class builder’, his presentation to 300 City experts at Chelsea’s stadium had been unconvincing and his problems were growing. The dotcom bubble was bursting and the stock market had begun to slide. The project’s bankers had made mistakes. Bates, with a talent for insulting those whose sympathy he required, could not staunch the growing pessimism.